A Truly Substantive Gift for the Golfer in Your Life
No more gimmicks this holiday season
If there’s someone in your life who really likes golf, someone who just can’t get enough day in and day out, give them the gift of a Golfer’s Journal subscription.
The Golfer’s Journal is a premium 150-page quarterly magazine filled with contemplative stories alongside magnificent photography discussing all elements of golf. The stories vary in length and tone. After reading some you may laugh, some you may immediately head to the driving range, and some will leaving you sitting alone in silence. You will also find profiles on figures from around the golfing world, such as “Gorjus” George Lucas, that would never get featured in your typical Hudson News selections. The Golfer’s Journal is head and shoulders above the mass-produced competition and while that means it comes with a higher price tag ($90/year), for someone who bleeds golf, it is beyond worth the price.
If, as an outsider, you’ve ever tried to purchase a golf-related gift for the truly obsessed person you may know, you’ve probably let them down. While they hopefully greeted your gift with gratitude and a smile, as all gifts should be, their appreciation was likely feigned. There are enough cheap gimmicks out there that no golf fanatic really needs. The Golfer’s Journal is the opposite. When it lands in the correct hands, The Golfer’s Journal will be wholeheartedly enjoyed.
In the best way possible, you can get lost in The Golfer’s Journal. Reading it cover to cover is an engrossing hours-long experience. Most other golf publications are designed for entertainment, not slow digestion. For a golf lover, The Golfer’s Journal is a respite from the world. Reading The Golfer’s Journal reinforces the shared sense of why we all love the game and why playing often remains a continuum throughout our everchanging lives. The words and images contained within can create the same sense of fulfillment you feel when playing a wonderful evening round.
Upon receiving your first edition of the magazine, you will be immediately struck by the gorgeous photography printed on the high-quality thick pages. In their inaugural edition, they highlighted Kohjiro Kinno, who takes most of the inventive and striking images throughout each magazine. Prior to reading that piece, I had never heard of this artist, but I am very happy to have been introduced to him. You can find some of his astonishing work here. Below is one of my favorites. The high-fidelity imagery in each issue broadcasts how The Golfer’s Journal is not just some printed vessel for schlepping advertisements. The magazine invites you to spend time with it and come back to it, even to just admire the visual beauty.
When you are reading the articles, however, you will find a variety of nuanced and exploratory essays. In Issue No. 13, Tom Coyne writes a short distillation about why golf can be valuable in building and maintaining male friendships. Whether I consciously realized it or not, golf has served this purpose in my life. Golf is an outlet for spending significant time with male friends away from screens, which can sadly be a rarity in today’s world. Nobody else is publishing a piece like this. Coyne writes,
I have seen scores of alpha males turn fragile on a first tee, and witnessed bulls of the business world spiral into meek apologizers, humbled by our game. And humility is essential to real male bonds, so the studies say. The trials of a round of golf can break us down to where, by the 16th hole, four quiet acquaintances have transformed into comrades rowing a lifeboat. We dream of golf that feels easy, forgetting that its struggles give us the gift of vulnerability that we carefully avoid elsewhere in our lives. And vulnerability, it seems, is the prescription for true friendships, which can do more for our well-being that grow our Christmas card list.
Each magazine also features several longer pieces. In Issue No. 15, Andrew Lawrence covers the history of Paspalum grass in great detail, which traces from the Atlantic Slave trade to many modern golf resorts. He details,
Worse, the Comte had no commode for these men, women and children. They could either relieve themselves over the edge of the ship of do their business in buckets — which, with the size of the crowd, overflowed quickly. In addition to the excreta, the cargo floors were consistently glazed in mucus, blood and vomit. In rough seas, the Comte’s portholes were closed, leaving the Africans in her belly gasping for breath and prone to disease. The whole mix made for a steamy, unholy stench that, to the sturdy nose of Alexander Falconbridge, a British slave-ship medic who authored the seminal abolitionist tome An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa in 1788, “resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting.” To help sop up the mess, the ship was bedded with grass pulled from the Angolan deltas.
Today, the same turf lines fairways and greens all over the world.
Here is a harrowing essay, primarily about a strain of grass. Nobody else is publishing a work like this either.
Golf is not without its flaws, and it will likely never shake them. The sport is expensive and elitist. The Golfer’s Journal balances the tension that comes from enjoying golf at seaside courses in places like Kiawah Island and Dubai, locations steeped in exclusivity and wealth, with the dark history of what makes golf in those locations possible. Paspalum grass is used in places like this because of it’s salt-tolerant characteristics, however its history is overshadowed and likely unknown to most. Promoting awareness of this particular dichotomy as well as other inequalities surrounding golf is worthwhile journalism. Though The Golfer’s Journal often focuses on why we collectively love golf, it does not neglect the issues of the game. Increasing our reverence for the world can only make us better individuals and that is what this article did for me.
At the top, I stated that The Golfer’s Journal is a quarterly publication but that definition is a bit limiting. They are also now producing excellent video and audio content, which is free to everyone. Much like the magazines, these other channels are professionally crafted and quite enjoyable. On the podcast front, I listen to each episode of their new Mind Game series. I find these more enjoyable than way than their regular episodes hosted by Tom Coyne, which can be a bit sleepy especially compared to other golf podcasts. On their YouTube channel, there are some wonderful instructional videos containing useful, rarely discussed information. This one is my favorite so far. And try this if you have more time on your hands. Again, if you aren’t a golf sicko then someone spending ten minutes explaining how swaggering body language and intentional practice strokes can make a vast improvement in your putting is likely mind-numbing, but to those who crave this, this is enthralling. The Golfer’s Journal will fill up their cup regardless of how and where they are consuming it.
As I’ve tried to highlight, the merits of The Golfer’s Journal are numerous. It’s my number one gift recommendation to anyone with the golf craze.
Thanks for reading.